The Exchange Contract Guide is an initiative designed to identify a common legal and commercial framework as the starting point for contract negotiations among exchanges, vendors and client firms.

Both the Working Group Sample Contract and the Exchange Contract Guide are available.

The overall goals of the project are to build consensus on a set of guiding principles related to contract negotiations and to offer FISD members a mechanism to promote constructive, non-confrontational discussions on contract issue areas outside of the negotiating room.

The goal of this activity is not to produce a "model or industry-standard contract," not an attempt to limit competition or restrict participants from agreeing to terms best suited for their individual enterprise and clearly not a replacement for bilateral contract negotiations. The Exchange Contract Guide is rather an industry reference point containing a comprehensive set of contract issues, commentary on the underlying business concepts and a range of practical contract text reflecting valid policy options for industry-wide consideration.

FISD members have been devoting significant resources to this activity because commercial and technical opportunities to use data are developing faster than contracts which govern their use. This project has become particularly important in that the industry is in the midst of a global contract cycle and the development and negotiation of contracts tie up valuable resources. There is general agreement among FISD members that much of the effort expended in contract negotiations is duplicative and wasteful. Standard terms of exchanges don't always correspond to situations encountered by vendors and end-users and reaching agreement involves multiple negotiations with each exchange only to result in contracts with only slight (but administratively important) alterations. Most members agree that the majority of those variations serve no commercial purpose except to prolong negotiation and increase the costs of compliance.

FISD's intent with this project is to offer the industry the ability to draw on the collective experience of exchanges, vendors, and user firms -- and to use it to assess market data policy recommendations and alternative points-of-view on important contract issues. The ECG can be used as the starting point for new contract negotiation, a point of comparison for existing contracts, and as a completeness checklist on critical business concepts. It will hopefully provide for administrative efficiency by simplifying and expediting the drafting and amending process, standardizing terminology, and allowing participants to focus negotiation resources on key issues. In addition, this initiative can help educate personnel outside of market data on exchange contract issues and increase understanding of compliance rules as well as promote stronger working relationships and increased confidence among parties.